TO THE READER.
7
lights are more discerned in a thick darkness, than a faint shadow. I speak not this, out of a hope to do good to any man, against his will; for I know, if it were put to the question of theirs and mine, the worse would find more suffrages: because the most favour common errors. But I give thee this warning, that there is a great difference between those, that, to gain the opinion of copy,[1] utter all they can, however unfitly; and those that use election and a mean. For it is only the disease of the unskilful, to think rude things greater than polished; or scattered more numerous than composed.[2]
- ↑ Copy, i.e. copiousness.
- ↑ I have retrieved this address (which is not in the folios) from the 4to. 1612. It is a spirited composition, and everyway worthy of the author, whose prose, I think with that shrewd old critic, E. Bolton, to be the best of the time. Had the commentators on Shakspeare (the enemies of our author) been aware of the existence of this little piece, they would have derived excellent materials from it for the display of "much clumsy sarcasm."
